Roasted Hot Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe

This roasted hot pepper hot sauce is a unique homemade hot sauce recipe that includes a tomato sauce base as well as roasted vegetables and spices to make a delicious hot sauce recipe that works great on chicken wings, ribs, rabbit, and more. It’s also a great addition to homemade salsas, homemade chili, and your favorite taco recipes.

SO many hot peppers in my garden = creativity in the kitchen!

I had a CRAZY serrano pepper season this year. After making my quick pickled peppers recipe FIVE times this season, as well as freezing a huge portion of them and trying many of the other ways to preserve a jalapeno (or serrano) harvest that I mentioned in this article, I was desperate to figure out something else to do with this many hot serrano peppers. 

I decided to try making hot sauce. I LOVE hot sauce! I’ve been obsessed with watching Hot Ones on youtube lately, where celebrities are interviewed while eating hot wings that get spicier as the show goes on. It’s pretty interesting and often really funny, and I would LOVE to know how I would do with those hot sauces, since I love spicy food so much.

I’ve avoided making homemade hot sauce in the past because I’m a bit of a hot sauce snob. Every recipe I would find for homemade hot sauces seemed to be mainly fined chopped up hot peppers. That’s not hot sauce! 

I wondered if I would ever find hot sauce recipes that seemed more…tomato based. Something smooth and red and tasty. Not just pureed hot peppers with vinegar.

So I kept looking and looking, and adding little bits of random hundreds of recipes to a notebook. My hot sauce recipe needed to be flavorful and complex. Finally, after many months of observing, researching, scribbling, and taste-testing, I figured out a good hot sauce recipe. Huzzah!

My hot sauce recipe ingredients (and why)

Obviously, my roasted hot pepper hot sauce recipe contains lots of hot peppers. I used serrano peppers, because that’s what I had in copious amounts. This recipe would also be good with jalapenos. Serranos and Jalapenos are pretty interchangeable in recipes, in my opinion. You could try using another similar hot pepper if you want, and if it’s good, let me know which pepper you used in the comments below.

I decided to roast my hot peppers to get an extra dimension of flavor from them. Since I was planning on adding garlic and onion to my hot sauce recipe, I decided to roast them, too. I have never been a big fan of raw garlic and onion. 

After roasting the veggies, I added some liquids to the batch: tomato sauce, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice. I added tomato sauce because I like hot sauces that have a tomato base. Many homemade hot sauce recipes use normal white vinegar, however, I have never been a big fan of that taste. Red wine vinegar works really well in tomato-based recipes, and it adds another complex flavoring to this hot sauce. Also, many hot sauce recipes use either lime juice or lemon juice as an acidic addition to help with preserving as well as keeping the colors bright. I didn’t think tomato and lime would go well together, so I went with lemon juice.

Finally, I added some spices to my hot sauce recipe to add even more complexity to the taste. Feel free to experiement with your favorite herbs and spices! I used turmeric and smoked paprika as well as salt and pepper. If you have hot paprika (learn more about the various paprikas here), that would be a great addition! I chose smoked paprika to give this roasted hot pepper hot sauce a smoky edge to the flavor.

The Results of my experiments…

I LOVE this roasted hot pepper hot sauce recipe! The flavor is delightfully complex. It’s not unbearably hot, thanks to the tomato sauce addition, but it’s still spicy enough to make me super happy. 

I hope you try this hot sauce recipe! Let me know if you like it in the comments below, and if you tweak the recipe at all, let me know what you did! Enjoy!

Roasted Hot Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe

Ingredients:

• 20-25 serrano peppers or 12-16 jalapeno peppers, depending on size of peppers
• 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 onion (I used a sweet yellow onion), roughly chopped
• 8 ounces tomato sauce
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric
• 1/2 tsp. smoked paprika
• salt and pepper (eyeball this, approx. 1/2 tsp. each)

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly oil or spray a foil-covered baking sheet (we want to mainly dry-roast the veggies, but we also don’t want them to stick!).
2. Put on Gloves. Cut the tops off of your hot peppers, slice in half (long-wise), scoop out and discard the seeds (see notes below).
3. Roast your hot peppers, garlic, and onion in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring once at the halfway point.
4. Remove from the oven and let them cool off before handling them. If you are using jalapenos, you might need to remove the skins. Serrano pepper skins are really thin and don’t need to be removed.
5. Add your roasted veggies to a food processor or good-quality blender, along with the tomato sauce, lemon juice, turmeric, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Process until it becomes a smooth liquidy hot sauce. WARNING: Be careful for backsplash!
6. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.
7. Optional: put in a saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes. This will help smooth out the taste.
8. Put your roasted hot pepper hot sauce in cute glass bottles. Store in the refrigerator, where it should stay good for approx. 4-6 weeks. Enjoy!

Notes:

**I discarded most of the seeds because they don’t puree into the sauce very well, and I don’t want little seed chunks in my hot sauce. If you don’t mind seeds in your sauce OR you have a fantastic food processor or blender, feel free to leave them in. This hot sauce will be even more spicy with the seeds in!

**I used my red serrano peppers for this recipe, if you use green hot peppers, it might change the coloring of your hot sauce.

**Recipe ideas: make hot sauce chicken wings (this is my favorite recipe, I just use my hot sauce in place of hers), add it to homemade chili, add a few dabs to scrambled eggs, add a dash to your favorite ribs recipe, add it to your bbq pork for a hot bbq sauce, add to your burgers, and more!

**As a spicy pepper lover, let me just repeat this incredibly useful tip: make sure you wear gloves! Not only that, be aware of everything you touch while you’re wearing the gloves. The spoon handle. The saucepan handle. The sink faucet handle. The knife handle. Etc. After you put the homemade quick pickled jalapenos in a jar and into the fridge (which you should do while still wearing the gloves!!), keep your gloves on. It’s time to clean up. First, wash your hands IN the gloves. Now, with the gloves still on, clean all the handles (don’t forget the fridge handle!), wash the cutting board and saucepan, etc. After cleaning up everything, wash your hands in the gloves again. THEN you can safely take your gloves off. 

**I mention all of the above because I have made these mistakes before. No need for you to go through it like I did! Heed my tips! Wear gloves and be smart with hot peppers. The burning feeling on your skin/eyes is no joke! And you feel extra bad if, for example, your hubby comes in the room, opens the fridge, and then his hands are burning hot because you forgot to wipe the fridge handle….trust me.

Are you a hot sauce lover? What is your favorite homemade hot sauce recipe? Feel free to share your hot sauce tips and recipes with me in the comment section below!

Check out my other Hot Sauce Recipes here:

• Pineapple Mango Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Recipe
• Citrus Grapefruit Habanero Hot Sauce Recipe
• Roasted Poblano Habanero Hot Sauce Recipe

Don’t forget to check out my Quick Pickled Jalapenos Recipe and my 35+ Ways to Preserve a Huge Jalapeno Harvest for more hot pepper cooking and preserving inspiration!